Cruz on the air

Ted Cruz, the tea party favorite who relentlessly tries to chip away at David Dewhurst’s frontrunner status in the Republican race for the U.S. Senate, launched his first TV ad today. Although the lieutenant governor isn’t named in the ad, it’s not hard to imagine who’s who when the narrator notes that “Politicians cut deals; principled conservatives deliver.” Cruz, a lawyer, has never held elective office.

The ad highlights Cruz’s role as Texas solicitor general when he argued the state’s position before the U.S. Supreme Court in the case known as Medellin vs. Texas. Medellin was a Mexican national sentenced to death for the rape and murder of two teenaged girls in Houston. Mexico sued the U.S. on behalf of 51 Mexican nationals held in U.S. prisons, maintaining that they had been denied the right to confer with their country’s diplomats. The Supreme Court sided with Texas, 6-3, and Medellin was executed in 2008.

Most polls show Cruz with the best chance among the three frontrunners of forcing Dewhurst into a runoff.